


Reweaving the Tapestry

by Zetared



Series: Reprise 'Verse [1]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 14:03:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4182627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zetared/pseuds/Zetared
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time as Q knew it has begun to catch up with itself. Q pulls at loose threads and continues on his quest to restructure the world--or, at least, the timeline of one Jean-Luc Picard--in a way that better pleases him. </p>
<p>("Tapestry," Reprise!'verse style.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reweaving the Tapestry

“We shouldn’t do this.”

Jean-Luc heaved a sigh and gave his waiting open hand a little shake. “Come on, Q, just hand me the spanner.”

“There’s no _need_ to do this,” Q replied, stubborn as ever, though the resistance itself was out of character. So much so, in fact, that Jean-Luc found himself worrying more about his friend’s state of mind than the task at hand.

With a bit of a scrambling, Jean-Luc worked his way around Corey’s knee and peeked out from under the Dom-Jot table. “Why are you being such a wet blanket? It isn’t like you to back down from a good trick. Besides, you saw what happened. The Naussicans deserve it.”

Q looked more miserable than Jean-Luc had seen him in a long time. In fact, he hadn’t looked this put out since the last time Jean-Luc had ended up in medical—a concussion, actually, after that botched attempt at localized teleportation from the men’s dorms to the women’s locker rooms. Q hadn’t put up a fuss about _that_ stunt. Hell, he’d designed and built the tiny teleporter himself. Which may, in hindsight, have explained why he’d been so upset when the device faltered mid-transaction and dumped Jean-Luc fifteen feet into the Dean’s prized flowerbeds instead of the locker rooms as intended.

“This isn’t going to end well, Jean-Luc. I don’t want to watch this happen again. Last time it was, well, it was pretty funny, actually, but this time it’s just going to…I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Jean-Luc closed his eyes and prayed to whatever cosmic forces might be listening for patience. Q was weird, sometimes, and while this wasn’t the first time his closest friend had said something strange, Jean-Luc had always rather hoped that the other man would grow out of it after they graduated from the Academy. It was difficult to explain away Q’s odd comments and strange ways, sometimes, and Jean-Luc feared that one day Q’s sheer weirdness was going to get them both in a lot of trouble. Starfleet didn’t take kindly to officers who were, well…eccentric.

“Q, everything is fine. It’s just a little bit of revenge, that’s all. We beat the Nausicaans at their own game, humanity comes out on top, and we all go have a celebratory drink before we ship out. It’s foolproof.”

Q snorted, and the sound was so full of its usual derisiveness that Jean-Luc felt himself relax. That, at least, was absolutely in character for his friend. “Foolproof is a concept developed by fools; there’s no such thing,” Q snapped, eyes narrowed. “And this plan is _stupid_.”  
  
“Stop jawing and come help, Johnny,” Corey complained. Q snorted again, this time a little more heated. Jean-Luc had never quite managed to get his oldest friend to warm up to his Academy fellows. Marta and Corey and the rest had always sort of tolerated Q out of respect for Jean-Luc, it seemed, but Q had felt no compunction to be civil, and he was even less so now when Corey was up to something of which he clearly disapproved.

“We’re nearly done,” Jean-Luc promised, returning to his task.

“ _You_ are, at least,” Q muttered, but Jean-Luc decided he didn’t want to know what the man could possibly mean.

\--

In the end, Jean-Luc wished he’d listened.

The fight had been good, at first. He and Corey’s plan for revenge hadn’t gone quite as hoped, perhaps, but a good bar fight was never a bad thing in Jean-Luc’s book, and the fact that the odds were against them in terms of brute strength didn’t even matter, much. Jean-Luc had had a confrontation with the species before, and he’d come out on top just fine. This time he had Corey and Marta at his back (Q, too, though the man was being his usual useless self and just _standing_ there, ducking out of the way of debris with a stony, unapproachable expression, as if he was above it all).

Jean-Luc had just sent an opponent sprawling, thinking _We’re going to win this!_ When he heard an expected noise behind him, and a warm, familiar weight pressed himself against his back. His brain had only just started to process the scent and touch as friend, not foe, when he felt himself being thrown forward several steps, as if pushed from behind. Then there was a sound, a terrible sound, wet and sharp, and Jean-Luc spun on his heel, startled by the sudden, unmistakable scent of blood, and the way the roar of the bar had gone abruptly silent, still as the grave.

Q’s eyes met his as they had done hundreds, thousands of time before. Q’s eyes were always on him, really, because Q had always been nearby, right by his side exactly when he was needed and sometimes even when he resolutely was not. Jean-Luc had seen Q surprised, before. Q was often baffled by the oddest of things. In any other circumstance, the wideness of the brown eyes, that particular set of his dark brows might have been funny, but now, as time slowed down to a crawl, Jean-Luc felt only a growing sense of understanding and accompanying dread.   
  
Q was so tall. He’d always been tall and gangly, more like a force of nature than a human form of flesh and blood. Well, there was no mistaking the blood, now, since most of it was spreading slowly over the too-white front of his uniform, the stain broken only by the sharp, stake-like point of the Nausicaan’s blade.

Q folded down, a puppet with strings cut, falling with odd grace to his knees. The man’s gaze left Jean-Luc and stared down, instead, taking in the blade and blood, the man’s expression flickering from surprise to pain to resignation to, bizarrely, amusement all in a flash. By the time Jean-Luc’s body obeyed his frantic command and he found himself at Q’s side, squeezing his friend’s forearms, screaming to the room at large for help, Q was laughing, a strange, strangled chuckling quite unlike his usual snide snicker or loud, braying guffaw.

“Q,” Jean-Luc managed, and his voice sounded odd to his own ears, too tight, too raw. There was so much more he needed to say, all the words cluttered against his tongue, but none would be spoken. He just gripped Q’s arms tighter, moving with the other man as he started to fall backward, eyes rolling up in his head, breath going suddenly, horrifying silent.

Jean-Luc felt someone grab him under the arms, tugging him back. It was Marta and Corey, he realized later, but at the time he hardly registered the motion at all. Medics, Starfleet blue and civilian beige, filled the space that Jean-Luc left behind, the circle of doctors—like Vultures, Jean-Luc thought fuzzily—hiding the body—god, Q—from sight.

Later, Jean-Luc would learn that there had been security staff, as well. He would learn that the Nausicaans had been arrested. Later, there would be a trial. Jean-Luc, Marta, and Corey would all barely scrape through by the skin of their teeth, starting their respective careers with nothing but a small blemish on their records, spots of discoloration that Jean-Luc would spend the rest of his long career in Starfleet working very, very hard to overcome.

Now, none of that mattered. In that moment, Jean-Luc wasn’t thinking of Starfleet or Nausicaans, or even the blood that stained his hands. He thought only of a tousle-haired boy about his own age who had once carried him five miles, cursing and complaining all the way, to the village clinic to repair his broken leg before his parents could find out. He thought of a glider smashed to pieces in a tall, tall tree, and of the fear that had filled his heart when they’d come down afterward, Q’s hands torn and bleeding from the rope as he’d held Jean-Luc’s flailing body in the air, pulling him slowly bit by bit back to the safety of the branches above. He thought of all the stunts, all the pranks, all the ill-advised adventures that they had thrown themselves into as boys, as teens, as young men. And every time, Q had been there to guide, to scold, to protect, to mend, to complain and complain and _complain_.

Jean-Luc would never hear that sneering, sarcastic drawl again. He’d never again wake up from an all-nighter, wrapped up in a mysterious blanket that smelled strongly of Q’s dreadful aftershave. He’d never trade barbs or sandwiches or Shakespeare quotations with the man again.

“Johnny,” Marta was saying, and he had the feeling she’d said it before, several times. Even heard, her voice seemed distant and warped, as if everything was underwater. “Johnny, they’re going to take him to medical. We have to follow them.”

Medical. Yes. That made some sense. They’d want to remove the blade and clean him up, there, before taking him to the nearest morgue. Jean-Luc’s mind churned through the necessary next steps, thinking of funerals and burial and memorials. They were Starfleet ensigns, now, even if they hadn’t quite made it aboard a ship, yet. As such, Q would have a Starfleet service. It seemed wrong, suddenly, to let that happen. Starfleet had always been Jean-Luc’s dream, not Q’s. Q had just gone along for the ride, as he’d always done before. Jean-Luc loved the stars. Q loved Jean-Luc. That was—god. Q had loved him. Why hadn’t he realized that, before? Or maybe he had, but he simply had pushed it to one side, more focused on the Academy, on Captaincy, on exploring the unknown universe. It was too late, now.

“My parents,” Jean-Luc mumbled, feeling hazy, not quite there. “They won’t want to come—they hated him, but they should know. They…they were the closest thing to parents he had, I think.”

“Jean-Luc,” Corey said, and it was so shocking to hear the other man use his given name that it brings Jean-Luc back to himself, a little. “Johnny, he’s not dead, yet. They want to operate. They…Johnny?”

Jean-Luc had learned very early in his life not to cry. His father had come from an old tradition, an older kind of stock that had certain ideas about how men were to feel, to react, to behave. He could not even remember the last time he had been reduced to tears, not even when he’d shattered his femur and had suffered through Q’s jostling all the way back to town. Now, however, the tears formed in his eyes and he couldn’t seem to stop them, so he didn’t bother. Marta and Corey tactfully said nothing as they tugged him to his feet and led him, barely sensible, thinking only _he’s still alive_ over and over again, to the infirmary waiting room.

\--

Jean-Luc knew that people often looked different in hospital. It was something about the strain of illness, the harsh, uncompromising lighting, something about being surrounded, everywhere, by the threat of impending death. He still felt shocked that the effect touched Q just like anyone else. Q always seemed so far removed from the commonplace. Jean-Luc had always felt a sense of baffling surprise whenever the man proved himself human, after all. Every sneeze, every paper cut, every time his friend had been left exhausted, hungry, or sick—it had always seemed wrong, somehow, a slip in the pattern of the universe that Jean-Luc had never been able to explain.

Q slept. He had been sleeping deeply for the better part of two days. The doctor assured Jean-Luc that this was to be expected. The surgery had gone remarkably well, the man’s body adapting to the artificial heart with ease, but the physical trauma of the attack and the subsequent repair had taken a lot out of his friend. He would be weak for a long time.

Jean-Luc had been meant to ship out the day before. Marta had visited that morning, explaining that she’d contacted Starfleet Headquarters, and they all had orders to stand down. They had to wait, now, for the trial. If Marta was bitter or resentful about this situation, if she blamed Jean-Luc and Corey for her career being in the balance, she didn’t mention it. She was exceptionally gentle, in fact, and even offered to stay with Q—whom she’d tolerated but never liked—for a few hours so Jean-Luc could get freshened up. Jean-Luc hadn’t realized until then that he was still wearing his dirty, bloodied uniform. He’d gratefully taken the offered assistance, and had been surprised all over again when he returned to find Marta sitting right at Q’s bedside, holding his limp hand and reading out loud from the PADD sitting on her knees.

“’Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on forever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was. So the older ones have become glassy-eyed and seldom speak (winking is the star language), but the little ones still wonder. They are not really friendly to Peter, who had a mischievous way of stealing up behind them and trying to blow them out; but they are so fond of fun that they were on his side tonight, and anxious to get the grownups out of the way. So as soon as the door of 27 closed on Mr. and Mrs. Darling, there was a commotion in the firmament, and the smallest of all the stars in the Milky Way screamed out’—Oh. Hey, Johnny. You’re looking better.”

“Don’t let me interrupt.”

Marta smiled and shook her head, thumbing the power button on her PADD. “Nah, I should go. Corey may be by later. He needed to check in back home. It…it was on the news, you know. His parents were worried.”

Jean-Luc felt a kick of guilt. His parents didn’t have access to the ‘net. They had always gotten their news from the gossip around the village, if that. They wouldn’t know about this, and Jean-Luc hadn’t found the strength required, yet, to go through the arduous process of getting ahold of them.

“Do you…need anything? Jean-Luc asked, weakly. He didn’t know what he could possibly offer Marta, right now, but it felt like a question that should be asked. Jean-Luc wasn’t the only one who had nearly lost someone a few days ago. True, his friends were not as close to Q as he was, but they did _know_ him, at least, and the attack had certainly been brutal.

Marta shook her head. “No, Johnny. I’m fine.” And she clearly was, too. They had all been to the Academy. They wanted to be Starfleet officers, someday. Of course witnessing the odd stabbing hadn’t fazed them. It was part and parcel of the job.

Jean-Luc took over the seat that Marta vacated and found himself wishing she’d left the PADD behind, as well. He’d recognized the work immediately. His deepest fondness for early human artistry was largely ancient, more Shakespeare than Steinbeck, as it were. Even so, very few humans left primary school without some knowledge of Peter Pan. The character’s station as a boy who never grew up retained its appeal, even now. Thinking of the stars made Jean-Luc’s somber mood settle all the deeper. He could not imagine the pain of it, the loneliness, of being able to witness but not intercede. It was, in a way, the Prime Directive in action, and though the Academy had drilled the concept into his brain again and again, he found it hard to put himself in that position, now. Learning his way around the Directive had been one of the things he’d most been looking forward to about starting his life as an ensign. And now his career seemed a far off, impossible thing, perhaps to be ended before it’d even begun, and all because of some foolish point of pride. Jean-Luc rested his elbows on the bed and put his head in his hands. He’d failed the entrance exam the first time. He’d worked so hard after that, and even then he’d barely managed to make it into the Academy. All of that time, all of that work, wasted.

And Q’s _life_ nearly wasted with it. It was the incident with the glider all over again. His foolishness and conceit had cost Q dearly then, as well. Jean-Luc raised his head from his hands and took Q’s fingers between his own as Marta had done. Unlike Marta, he turned the limp digits over in his hold, running his fingertips over the thick scar tissue in the line between the digits. Q had regained only 80% of the range of motion back in his hands, afterward. Even today, his grip was startlingly weak. It was a stroke of dumb luck that he’d passed the physical portion of his Academy exam. He’d squeaked by the requirements by a single margin. One point fewer and he’d have been forever grounded, unable to follow Jean-Luc on his quest to the stars.

Q’s fingers twitched at the touch, curling inward reflexively and then with more purpose. Jean-Luc startled at the motion, lunging for the call button even as he loomed over Q, his free hand drawn to his friend’s sweaty hair, fingers pushing through the tangled curls. “Q? Can you hear me?”

Q’s eyes opened in the barest of slits, his lips twitching in a familiar sneer. “ _Mon Capitan,_ ” he muttered, voice hoarse and phlegmy. Jean-Luc scrambled a little for the ever-waiting cup of water next to the bed and offered the straw tip to his friend. Q huffed, rolling his eyes a bit, but he drank obediently and seemed to speak better for it. “My chest hurts.”

“I’m afraid that’s to be expected, Mr. Hill. May I call you Quinton?” Dr. Borra was a kind individual with a wide face and sharp, accessing eyes. Jean-Luc had taken to xir right away, and not the least because xe had been so attentive to Q’s case. The fact that xe was here now, answering the call instead of sending a nurse was a real credit to the doctor’s dedication, as far as Jean-Luc was concerned.

Q grimaced, as he always did when his given name was used. “I’d rather you not. Q is fine.”

“Very well, then, Q. Chest pains are to be expected, all things considered. Are you feeling any other pain at present?”

Q was already impatient with the questions. Jean-Luc could read that expression on his face as easily as he could read words on a page. Jean-Luc gave his friend’s hand a tighter squeeze of warning. _Be nice_ , the gesture said, and Q flashed him a wounded look before refocusing his attention on the doctor.

“I’ve got a headache.”

“Probably a side-effect of the medication. On a scale--.”

“ _Five_ ,” Q sighed out, exasperated. Jean-Luc gave up on the hand-squeezing. It wasn’t going to do any good. “I can handle it. What I’m more concerned with at the moment is the _how_. Why am I here?”

Jean-Luc startled, staring down at his friend with wide eyes. “You don’t remember?”

Q rolled his eyes heavenward as if pleading for strength from the universe itself. “Clearly. What idiotic thing did you pull me into this time, Jean-Luc?”

The accusation, casual and not at all malicious, sent Jean-Luc sprawling. He stumbled back a step, letting go of Q’s hand in the process. “I think…I need…” he managed, and then he bolted for the door, fleeing more like a coward than a proper member of Starfleet.

Jean-Luc bulldozed his way out of the building and into the cheerful, open gardens. The flowers reminded him of Boothby, and the accompanying wave of homesickness was strange but somehow comforting, too. He sat on a nearby stone bench among the lilac bushes and Andorian moonplants and reminded himself to breathe.

\--

By the time he returned—sheepish and bearing gifts—Dr. Borra was long gone. Q appeared to be dozing again, though someone had tilted his bed up into a sitting position, causing his head to loll to the side in a manner that didn’t seem very comfortable.

Jean-Luc set his gift of apology—a complicated puzzle box from the hospital gift shop; Q would have it solved in a matter of hours, if that, but Jean-Luc knew the diversion would be appreciated, anyway—on the night stand. He then paced a bit at the foot of the bed, muttering to himself as he attempted to re-rehearse the words he’d prepared to meticulously in the garden. He didn’t want to forget what he intended to say before Q woke up.

“It’s three twists to the left, two to the right, one up, three down, and three to the right,” Q said, sounding a bit groggy.

Jean-Luc spun around to face the man, surprise melting into confusion. “What?”

Q gestured toward the waiting puzzle box with two fingers. Jean-Luc had a bad feeling that he’d intended the gesture to be much more expansive and simply didn’t have the energy to achieve it. “I solved it.”

Jean-Luc stared at his friend and then snorted in a mix of amusement and disbelief. “Q, you never cease to amaze me.”

Q’s answering expression was smug. “Yes, well. I am very impressive.” The young man grimaced suddenly, shifting in his half-seated position. He pressed his palms against the mattress and pushed up, apparently attempting to adjust himself on it. The motion must have hurt because he choked out a sound and fell back against the pillows, right back where he’d started but now three shades paler and shaking.

Jean-Luc strode the few steps across the room to the bed side and moved without thought (he really should have asked, first) or hesitation to slip his arms under the man’s bare arms and around his waist. Q pushed at him, resisting.

“Get off!”

“Q!” Jean-Luc snapped back, bristling. “Stop it! Stop it. Let me help.”

Jean-Luc wasn’t sure if it was the words or his own exhaustion that stopped Q from resisting, but it didn’t really matter either way. “Good. Now, just hold still.” With that, he pulled up, settling Q higher and more centered on the bed than he’d been. The tug made Q groan a bit, but he got where he’d wanted to go, and he seemed better off for the assistance.

Jean-Luc backed away once the deed was done, sinking slowly into the chair nearby. Silence fell between them for a while, which was strange all on its own, because Q was practically allergic to silence and tended to fill it with his own inane prattle. Jean-Luc’s eyes found a stray thread on his trousers. He pulled at it idly, intent. Jean-Luc had lost all of the words he’d so careful rehearsed, now. He couldn’t just throw them out into the open air. The moment had passed for them, and he couldn’t seem to find any other words to use now that the one’s he’d prepared were gone. _Later_ , he promised himself. He would apologize later.

Q being first to break the silence was no surprise whatsoever. “It feels very strange.”

“The heart?” Jean-Luc hazarded, because he wasn’t stupid, and ignoring the elephant in the room really wasn’t going to help, in the end.

“Yes. The design is flawed, of course. Human innovation is acceptable enough for most things, but I’m rather disappointed in this particular invention. Have you ever seen one of these artificial models? So clunky. So dour.”

Jean-Luc laughed softly despite himself, looking up and finding Q’s eyes laser-focused on him, fathomless as ever. “It’s meant to be functional, Q, not aesthetically pleasing.”

“I don’t see why it couldn’t be both. The organic design certainly is.”

“You find the human heart pleasant to look at?” Jean-Luc said, skeptical.

“Certainly. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the human structure is redundant and hideous—take the appendix, for example, or the penis, but—.”

“You find the…you find reproductive organs redundant?” Jean-Luc stared at his friend rather blankly. They’d not spoken about sex much, especially considering their long friendship as adolescents. For the most part, Jean-Luc had taken all talk of girls and sex to Corey and his other Academy friends. Before the Academy, he’d learned not to mention it. Q seemed disinterested, at best, and disgusted at worst. Now Jean-Luc wondered if an inherent distaste for human sexual anatomy might be why.

“Not redundant for the purposes of continuing the species,” Q said, as if to reassure. “I’m not that limited in my understanding of the mortal need to reproduce and evolve. Just redundant in the terms of having much use _outside_ the reproductive process. And the hideous goes without saying, really.”

Jean-Luc felt a little dizzy. After so many years in each other’s pockets, so to speak, he really should have been used to the way Q could completely derail a conversation into unique and unusual territory, but this particular diversion really took the cake.

“Many humans find sexual activities useful beyond reproduction. For recreation, for example, or stress-relief.”

“Yes. I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around that, honestly. You’d think I could, having such a massive IQ, but I suppose there are some things in the universe that require more instinct than intellect.”

Jean-Luc felt like he was drowning in information he hadn’t wanted or needed, now, and he decided the best course of action was to cling to the safety-raft of their previous conversation. “But you think the human heart is…pretty?”

“Yes. And functional. Not at all redundant. Obviously.” Q sighed, moving his staring gaze from Jean-Luc to the ceiling. “And now my heart is ugly, and it doesn’t even work right.”

Jean-Luc flinched. “I wish you wouldn’t say that. You seem fine, to me, and saying otherwise makes me…worry.”  
  
Q waved a hand, a familiar gesture of dismissiveness that always put Jean-Luc’s teeth on edge. “I’m not going to keel over suddenly or anything. I’ve spoken to the doctor, and xe was kind enough to show me the blueprints. It’s not a bad machine, as I said before. However, there are certain aspects of its design that are badly done, and I don’t appreciate having something sub-standard in my chest cavity.”

“All right,” Jean-Luc sighed, “what’s wrong with it?”

The following hour-long rant should have tried Jean-Luc’s patience to its breaking point, but in the end, it was such an overwhelming relief to hear his friend whine on and on as usual that he didn’t mind at all.

“—and, finally, it makes a terrible racket. It will be a miracle if I get any sleep again for the rest of my life.”

Jean-Luc blinked, pulling himself out of the hazy half-listening state he’d fallen into about fifteen minutes into the other man’s speech. “It does? I can’t hear it.”

“Well of course you can’t. I can’t hear your heart from way over there, either. It’s a lot harder to ignore when it is _in_ you, though, believe me.”

“Can I listen?”

Q’s wide gestures—much more emphatic than they’d been when he’d first woken up, must to Jean-Luc’s relief—and chatter felt still and silent. He stared at Jean-Luc for a while, eyes wide. “You what?”

“You can say no,” Jean-Luc said, patiently, and he absolutely meant it; Q was very particular about touch, and Jean-Luc had been remiss before in not asking permission before helping his friend resettle on the bed. “I just want to hear it.”

Q looked suspicious, which was to be expected, but then he sighed gustily and waved his hand in a ‘come here’ motion. “All right, then, but don’t linger. My chest hurts enough without your big head crushing it.”

Jean-Luc stood close to the bed and rested a hand on the mattress near Q’s bare shoulder, careful not to put any of his own body weight against the other man and he leaned over and put an ear just to the side of his friend’s sternum. It took all he had not to lurch backward in shock. Q was right, the machine _did_ sound very odd, more like a percussion of metal and grinding gears—a churning, stuttering whirr of constantly moving mechanisms—than the steady, slushy beat of an organic heart. Jean-Luc’s guts twisted with guilt and his splayed hand on the bed fisted, gathering up the sheets and squeezing hard.

“It is a little strange,” he admitted softly, unable to keep the pained tone out of his voice.

He was surprised when a moment later he felt pressure against his head. Q had placed a hand over his skull, gently cupping his fingers around the bone, digging his fingers pleasantly into Jean-Luc’s hair—already thinner than he was comfortable with, damn his father’s genetics—and scratching a little against his scalp. Jean-Luc had vague, aged memories of Q’s fingers doing this before when he was much younger. He’d been sick in bed with some kind of flu. Q had clambered in through his bedroom window, as he was wont to do, and curled around him all night, fingers soothing through his hair just like this.

Jean-Luc coughed and cleared his throat, pulling abruptly away and sitting back into the chair. “It’s a perfectly sound device, Q,” he said, voice firm and unwavering. “Don’t bother the medical staff about it, all right?”

Q’s expression was pained for a second, far too open and sad, but then it shuttered, blank and unapproachable as it had been during the bar right, just before he’d thrown himself between Jean-Luc and the knife. “All right,” he sighed, and the blank look morphed easily into an expression of long-suffering. “But I refuse to let myself be subjected to the quality of the food here. I _hate_ Jello.”

Jean-Luc closed his eyes and shook his head, smiling a little. “I’ll bring you something else, later. Maybe a chocolate sundae.”

Q made a sound of appeasement in response, his eyelids starting to weigh heavy on him. Jean-Luc was actually surprised he’d managed to stay awake and alert this long. As Q’s eyes closed, Jean-Luc got up from the chair, intending to find a nurse to inform them that their patient was asleep. He jerked in surprise to find himself snagged in passing, Q’s limited grip at the height of its strength, warm and rough around Jean-Luc’s wrist. “Don’t go,” Q mumbled, eyes still closed.

Jean-Luc grabbed the puzzle box up with his free hand and obediently fell back into his chair. “I won’t,” he assured, and moved so that his fingers tangled up with Q’s in a loose but present squeeze. “Go to sleep.”

Q said something completely inarticulate and soon fell into a deep sleep once more, his hand slacking around Jean-Luc’s and allowing him to wiggle free. While Q slept, Jean-Luc tried to remember the order of instructions that Q had given about how to open the elusive puzzle box. Several long, frustrating hours later, Jean-Luc gave the toy up, finding it much more trouble than it was worth.

Five minutes later, Jean-Luc huffed a sigh and picked up the box to try it again. He’d never really been able to let something so complex and engaging go unsolved, no matter how frustrating it might be. _Puzzle boxes and Qs_ , he thought, idly, and smiled as the first segment of the box popped free with the next twist.

_End_


End file.
